Thursday, January 23, 2020

Is It Time to Mobilize Canada, the Canadian People, and Our Economy?




I know you don't want to hear this. I know you would rather bury your head in the sand. But you need to know that kind of thinking is about the very best way to seal your (our) fate.

In today's National Observer, retired professor (anthropology), Dennis Bartels, and Natasha Bartels (his daughter?), are calling for the federal government to mobilize the nation to ready Canada for the onslaught of climate change. (Dr. Bartels is no newcomer to this cause. A bit of searching turned up a paper that he wrote on this same subject in 2001.)
There have been numerous calls from scientists, news media and public figures to change our ways on a massive scale. These calls have not, however, provided a large-scale blueprint for sustained and organized change. This desperately needed blueprint for massive, effective and rapid social and economic transformation can be found in Canadian socio-economic mobilization for the Second World War.
...
The Second World War mobilization included wage and price controls, food rationing and establishment of Crown (government-owned) corporations to produce war materials and supplies the private sector was unable or unwilling to provide.
Taxation of the wealthy and private businesses was dramatically increased to support the war effort during the Second World War. Amounts in excess of government-imposed profit levels were taxed away.
... 
The components of Second World War mobilization which should be updated and adapted to meet the climate crisis are:
1. Planned resource management and development, created in partnership with Indigenous communities, aimed at reducing carbon emissions and repairing environmental damage.
2. Taxation of wealth to fund the restructuring of the economy.
3. Reorienting education and training toward development of green industry and technology.
4. Creation of new Crown corporations to meet industrial production needs and protect access to necessaries of life.
5. Building co-operative international relations to reduce carbon emissions and protect shared environmental resources.
Well, isn't that quite a 'wish list.' The Bartels go on to add another recommendation, naming the enemy.
During Second World War mobilization in Canada, Hitler’s Germany was the enemy of Canada and the other Allied countries. In the climate crisis, fossil-fuel corporations and related industries are the enemies of all countries because they have created the crisis we now face. It is clear they intend to continue their practices that now threaten the existence of human life on our shared planet.

Fossil-fuel companies are now claiming we are all responsible for the climate crisis because most of us use fossil fuels. This is a diversionary tactic by fossil-fuel companies to distract the general public from the basic fact that it is these companies who are to blame for what we now face. It has now been revealed that major oil companies such as Exxon knew for decades combustion of fossil fuels causes global warming. Instead of changing their industries, they funded climate-science denial on a massive scale. 
Every person currently alive was born into a fossil-fuel economy and infrastructure. We did not give our consent to be part of this destructive system, and numerous attempts by both scientists and ordinary people to change it have been aggressively suppressed and undermined by the economic giants of the fossil-fuel industry.




1 comment:

the salamander said...

.. the Holy Trinity..

- OUR elected Public Servants
- Big Business & MainMedia
- Organized Religion

Out of and Within.. that unholy disaster are undeniable consequences
some, actually many have already landed of course, but more are gestating

Conspiracies, Meddling, Deceit, Money etc
all bubbling together & now comes a strange and twisted hyperpartisan mutation
This is the fraternization of Greedy political animals
with 'End Times & The Rapture wingnuts
and Big Business bagmen plus sold out 'journalism'

Ethics becomes 'situational' to the grifters, preachers and screetchers
Its as if they're of a special " exalted class.. even above the Law
The Law of the Land is theirs only.. to proclaim and manipulate

You want 'biblical' .. ? They have it by the barrel ..
The 'grooming' is non-stop.. the assault daily